Death of the "bad guy"

Hi all. I’m sorry that did not let you know about wild life news from Russian Far East for a long time. But as for recent case – It is just my duty to tell you about it.
The story starts with phone call in the last days of the February – It was my friend-biologist from Sikhote-Alinsky reserve (North-East of Primorsky kray). He told me that dead tiger was found there recently. Tiger died with quite strange conditions, and necropsy should be performed soon. Conditions were really strange – front limbs were covered by multiple deep wounds/bites. Tiger took these wounds presumably from another tiger. However, there were no visible serious traumas that could cause animal death. Of course, such event produced for me huge interest and enthusiasm to investigate this case.
For the first I contacted institution, where necropsy should be performed, to clear up question of my presence and taking part in this procedure. Pathologists warmly accepted my application, and reported that necropsy should be performed on the 3rd of March (i.e. in three days). Undoubtedly, necropsy will throw light on many things, but I was bursting to find out something and I started to collect information about tiger, his life – all that was possible.
Tiger is happened to be resident male of the area. Tiger was not radiocollared, but phototraps “caught”

animal quite often. The first time was in 2007 when “our friend” was photographed near red deer kill. According to assertions of biologists in that time animal was about 1,5–2 years old, thus animal was 5,5 years old at least to this moment. It was also discovered that female was present in this area, and possibly – another male. Our male spent about twenty four hours on the rookery (in one place) before death. Who did such deep bites still was a mystery.

The day of necropsy had come. People from different – government and non-government – organizations had assembled there. It was established that wounds on the limbs were taken relatively for a long time ago, it was bites of another tiger. Wounds were seriously infected (they had color of boiled meat). Septicemia was the cause of death. Furthermore, fresh injuries presented as hemorrhages were revealed in the area of hind limbs, which told us that by having pathological process in the front limb tiger had another fight before death. But another interesting stuff was revealed during the necropsy procedure – stomach contents were presented by remains of another tiger.
Cannibalism in populations of wild tigers is a quite rare event. As far as I found out - there were only 3 fixed cases (including that one) of cannibalism among tigers on the Russian Far East for last 50 years. On another hand, it is common that one male kills during fight another one to confirm his dominance in the area, or kills cubs (from foreign litter) to do mating with female – but consuming of killed congener … Such cases could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
These circumstance begged a lot of questions at the reserve employees. As parts of consumed tiger (part of

head and paws) were found in the stomach it means that our male consumed them not so long time ago (2-3 days). If take to account that our tiger slacken off during last days – this fact lessened radius of area for searching of consumed tiger remains. Special group of reserve employees were sent for this purpose. Their work was not vain as they had found two skeletons of tiger cubs (about 6 months old) with eaten head and limbs. There were no doubts that our tiger consumed these ones.
Now everything, more or less, slotted into place. Possibly it had happened in such way – to have mating with female tiger killed her cubs. By trying to protect children, tigress (or even cubs for themselves) injured male. Infection joined to injured tissues afterwards. It is difficult to say now if tiger was predisposed to cannibalism or animal just could not get another prey because of weakness – but he consumed cubs before death – this is fact. Of course, It is not necessary that all thing happened in such way – we just can guess, but such sequence of events seems to be logical at least.
As for fresh hemorrhages – point of little combat between our male and another male was found near the place of death. They fought about two days before our one has gone. So, five tigers in the area of 2 square kilometers were looped in this event – which is strange in itself.